EDITORIAL 



177 



would even consider such a possibility. Forestry in 

 every Continental country is controlled by men speci- 

 ally fitted by long training, based on technical prepara- 

 tion, and promotion is by efficiency alone. It is true that 

 in our hit-or-miss wasteful system we are apt to regard 

 men as capable of turning readily from one occupation 

 to another, and of jumping in and out of forestry to 

 suit the vicissitudes of political changes or the whims of 

 nontechnical bosses, but no enduring work in State for- 

 estry will ever arise until the profession rests on a basis 

 so sound that men of more than average ability can 

 undertake State work as a life job, secure in their 

 positions as long as they deliver the goods. A State 

 which is unwilling to segregate its forestry work from 

 politics and provide for a permanent constructive policy 

 is wasting time and money meddling with the subject. 



How is this segregation to be obtained? Experience 

 covering two decades has shown the best method of 

 accomplishment. The program has both positive and 

 negative injunctions. 



First. Create a forestry board, composed of men se- 

 lected for their interest in or knowledge of forestry. 



Second. Do not have the Governor as a member of 

 this board. He is too closely affiliated with partisan 

 politics. He may appoint the board, but should be aided 

 by advice of an authoritative character on the part of 

 State forestry associations or other bodies. 



Third. Make this board responsible for selecting and 

 appointing the State forester, and provide that he shall 

 be technically trained. 



Fourth. Do not place this appointive power in the 

 hands of the Governor. In three different States in 

 which this latter arrangement is in force successive Gov- 

 ernors, although charged by law to select only a tech- 

 nically trained man for this office, have overridden the 

 law and appointed men not only without such training, 

 but in some instances with no knowledge, capacity or 

 desire to perform the duties of the office. 



Fifth. Do not appoint the State forester as a member 

 of this board, but let him act as their executive agent 

 and secretary. Where a State forester is appointed by 

 the Governor and is a member of a board, the board is 

 too often reduced to a position of impotency, and can 

 exercise no effective check upon the executive. No 

 really efficient forester fears the control of such a board, 

 but rather welcomes it. Many important problems arise, 

 and often matters of policy, which call for strong action. 

 An able and conscientious board can either take the 

 responsibility for a policy which would otherwise em- 

 barrass the forester or can restrain his desires should 

 they prove too radical. 



With a healthy and organized public sentiment to 

 make sure that proper appointments are made to such a 

 forestry board, the maximum of efficiency is possible, 

 ihis plan is not a theory evolved in the brain of some 

 professor of forestry; it is the concrete result of prac- 

 tical demonstration in the laboratory of American poli- 



tics. The States which have attempted something in 

 forestry and failed are those which have made one or 

 more of the mistakes in organization indicated above. The 

 States which have limped where they should run are those 

 which have been handicapped by some form of political 

 influence which thwarted the free play of the ability of 

 technical foresters. The States where forestry has in 

 the past decades made substantial strides in public favor 

 and in actual achievement are without a single excep- 

 tion indebted to the work of technical foresters for most 

 of this progress, either in a major or subordinate 

 capacity or by example. 



These principles need all the greater emphasis because 

 of a flank attack which lately has been gathering mo- 

 mentum under the banner of efficiency and economy. It 

 has become the fashion to effect consolidations, reduce 

 the number of commissions and State departments, and 

 thus secure substantial saving in executive machinery. 

 This conception, admirable in itself, when it is brought 

 to bear on forestry, tends to seek out other State de- 

 partments of a more or less kindred nature and to con- 

 solidate them under one head. Subject to such amalga- 

 mation are park, water supply and fish and game com- 

 missions, State geological survey and State conserva- 

 tion commissions. The term conservation in effect 

 serves as a catch-all in which to dump various State 

 activities, whether or not they belong together. 



Again, we base our opinion of this process not on the 

 theory of efficiency which dictates it, but upon its prac- 

 tical results. If for efficiency we require the subordina- 

 tion of the forest policy and interests to those of com- 

 missioners far more interested in the preservation of 

 wild life, or the regulation of State water powers, we 

 will secure perhaps a saving, but not a forest policy. 

 The State o-f Louisiana has waited patiently for several 

 years for the appointment of a forester by the State 

 Conservation Commission, and at date of writing the 

 commission is still promising to take this action in the 

 near future. 



Such consolidations defeat their own ends. The prin- 

 ciple is wrong from top to bottom. State forestry must 

 not be consolidated with a miscellaneous assortment of 

 conservation interests, but must stand or fall as a clean- 

 cut and separate proposition, judged on its own merits, 

 financed with its own funds, and managed by its own 

 board and executive. Then, and then only, will we be 

 on the road to successful demonstration that we can do 

 in this country with our wild lands what every other 

 civilized nation has been doing for the last century 

 produce continuous and paying crops of commercial 

 timber. 



AMERICAN FORESTRY FREE 



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